The Best Laid Plans
by Lafayette1777
Summary: Madness, it seems, is contagious. In which Q limps through the life he's built for himself and James Bond aims to become a part of that life, in his own damaged, unpredictable way. Naturally, things get muddled.
1. Careful Contemplation

**Author's Note: This might be a mess. I've been thinking about this ship for about week, thought up a little plotline, and watched six James Bond movies in five days. My mind is a fluffy wreck. But comments do, in fact, make my day, so you should leave some. **

003 had been shot dead in the Pribilofs, 005 had disappeared suddenly in Ulaanbataar; in short, it had been an eventful week for MI-6. And, for once, James Bond was not at all involved.

However, Q was in the midst of all of it, directing, listening, fidgeting, and occasionally finding it necessary to stay up all night to work on his oil paintings, read six novels, develop three new prototypes and learn a new sonata for his viola.

On Sunday, he runs four miles, until his lungs burn, his back doesn't hurt, and he starts to feel like himself again. It's these sort of traumatic, fast-moving weeks that usually kicks his existing mania into overdrive. It's productive, but it ruins him, and in retrospective he's mortified in his sureness that the entire office can tell when he's feeling particularly out of control.

It doesn't help that he had to listen to 003 die slowly over the airwaves, two bullets in his left chest not quite ready to let him slip into oblivion. The agent had the decency to yank out the earwig before he gave his last gasping breath, an action that proved to be his last. Q is selfishly grateful for this final act on the double-O's part, even though he's fully aware that it was not so much for him, and more for the privacy that all things crave in the moments before death.

Monday morning, after carefully programming in ten hours of sleep the night before, he comes in feeling considerably more put together. He bids a self-conscious good morning to the minions before shutting himself in his office. Everything seems to have calmed down a bit in the hallways of MI-6, the overwhelming movement of last week replaced by the somber blanket that dead agents tend to bring.

He settles into his standing work station, rolling his shoulder blades to see what sort of day he's going to have. There's only one chair in his office, and it's only for visitors who fancy a place to sit next to the tinted windows. In his email he finds new orders from Tanner to fix some new Q-Branch device that Medical is complaining about causing hairline wrist fractures in the agents that use it. Q finds the correlation highly unlikely, but bites his lip and gets to work.

Khadija saves him twenty minutes later, appearing in his office without knocking and falling heavily into the seat with the view. She's in her early forties, wearing the nondescript business casual that most of the eccentric minions have succumbed to.

"Something wrong?" Q asks her, one eyebrow raised.

She sighs. "The software guys for Project Beehive are bitching about reformatting again."

"What set them off this time?"

"We had a meeting a few minutes ago and they claimed that everything would go quicker if they could clean everything up so _they_ could read it easier. As you know, though, it's not like we have the time for beautification. It's total horseshit. They're the only ones that have a problem reading it."

"You're just upset because you're a hardware girl and therefore must perpetuate the age old feud between the two," Q smirks. "Really, should relieve your stress the way I do: chewing out the double-O's when they decide they don't care about our government equipment. There's something so satisfying about seeing a look of shame and apology on the face of a person who could snap your neck with one hand."

"You sadist," she laughs. "They must be terrified. They've all got PTSD, you know, you've got to be careful."

"I send them running with their tails between their legs," says Q, sarcasm dripping but with a smile on his face. "Anyways, though, tell the software teams that we're not reformatting. I maintain the base code, and I have no problem interpreting it, so if they don't like it they can eat their own livers."

Khadija leaps to her feet. "The overlord is on my side. I will make sure they eat their own livers."

"Make sure you quote me exactly. Don't want them eating their kidneys by accident." His mind wanders back to his email, where there's a new message from Moneypenny saying that 007 will be on his way down any moment to collect his mission essentials. She's enclosed the mission description so he'll know what to prepare. He digs around a few file cabinets until he finds the correctly modified handgun and a functioning GPS watch they've been working on. It's not the only watch they have of this sort—Q knows better than to give James Bond anything that can't be replaced.

He steps out of the office just as the agent becomes visible, strolling in among the minions' desks, eyes sweeping the scene for Q. Bond stands out, as always, recognizable just from the heaviness of his foot falls and the swing of his shoulders as he walks with his preternatural confidence, begging to be reminded that this is Q's division, not his. All the double-O's, Q has noticed, seem to have the same skewed sense of reality, clouded by the ability to get whatever they want from anyone they choose. But they can work in reverse also, disappearing into the background at will. On occasion, he's found himself losing track of an agent in room populated by only four people.

The power they have is unnerving. Q usually compensates by reprimanding them. But James Bond is different, and that unnerves him too. He's one of the older agents, face rough and hard. The double-O's like to think they are the most perceptive bunch around, reading off your face anything that can't sneak in and read off your file, but Q has sharp eyes too. When he thinks no one's looking, Bond does everything slowly. Sitting down, reaching for high shelves, standing up. He's decaying inwardly, like most of those with a license to kill, but his body is betraying him too. And in a fucked up sort of way, Q finds that endearing, because it reminds him so much of his own mannerisms.

Bond, though, doesn't seem to be in the mood for his usual, bantering back and forth that is a near guarantee for any of his visits to Q-Branch. Instead, his stride is purposeful, his burning eyes locked on to Q's. In the few seconds it takes for Bond to cross the room, Q finds himself wondering that if the eyes are the windows to the soul, would he see anything at all in 007's pupils?

"Morning," is all Q has time to say before Bond crashes into him, which is about the same time that Q's mind begins to unravel and lock onto the one tangible thing in the universe.

Bond's lips against his.

It defies all rational thought. An impossibility as Bond wraps an arm around him and pulls him closer. Q closes his eyes and tries to put together sentences, to separate himself. No wonder Bond always gets what he wants—no one's ever kissed Q like this before.

Finally, Bond releases him, and Q stumbles back, his knees a little wobbly and his brain closing in on itself. He looks to Bond for some sort of explanation, but the man simply picks up the gun and wristwatch that Q had found for him and smiles a smile that doesn't quite reach his lips. He winks, then swiftly turns and walks away.

The minions have all stopped working to watch the event. Q looks to them, cheeks flushed but the embarrassment still fended off. He sees his own look of surprise and shock mirrored on all of their faces. No one seems particularly sure what just happened, and certainly no one knows what to make of it. Q is left checking his memory to make sure that it really did just occur, that it wasn't some half-manic, subconscious dream working it's way to the surface.

His entire face is tingling as he secludes into his office again.

He leans against the cool glass of the window, tries to slow his heartbeat and regaining command of mind and body. There has to be reason in this, hidden beneath the surface.

His first thought is that he's being manipulated.

Because that's what double-O's do. They play with people. Not necessarily for fun, but because the job calls for it, and they live for the job. Sex (love, even) makes everyone fight a little harder for each other, tell a little more. None of them seem to have much preference for one gender over another, and their charms work on everyone in arm's reach. This isn't new information for Q, because he composes himself for dealing with the agents everyday. They all flirt, to the point where sometimes it seems their only way of communication with the world, through thinly veiled sexual innuendos and a lack of respect for personal space. Some are easier to ignore the others—for Q, preferring men, the female agents don't have much control over him. Bond is always more of a challenge, because he _is _attractive, and could almost be Q's type, if Q wasn't fully aware of the consequences that come with loving someone like James Bond. He'd decided, from the moment he met James Bond in the art museum, that it isn't worth the inevitable heartbreak. Someone would end up dead or alone and, at the time, it had all seemed so pointless.

All this, before Bond proved that Q has no willpower whatsoever.

For the rest of the day, he's unfocused, bouncing from one thing to another alarmingly. He looks at a clock in the late afternoon and finds that Bond is in Zurich by now. A moment later, he asks himself why that matters at all.

Still feeling a little volatile, he decides sleep is his first priority and leaves by six, pulling on his jacket and backpack without looking at his employees. They don't dare stare at him for more than a few seconds, except Khadija, who's always had more balls than the vast majority of her colleagues.

He meets up with Moneypenny on the way out. She's dressed for an evening out, in a short green dress with her tied up in an elegant bun. He gives her an easy compliment, and she asks if he's off to an evening of entertainment.

"More like an evening of tea and Spanish soap operas," he smiles, more than a little glad that she doesn't seem to know about the exploits of the morning. He wonders if the information has even made it out of Q-Branch yet.

"Well, I'm sure that has it's charms," she says as he holds the door for her. After a year and a half, he's finally gotten over her telling Bond that he's afraid of flying, which isn't even completely true, but the events of earlier today have brought it forward in his mind. He bids her a terse goodnight and heads toward the underground.

It's only once he's on the train that he realizes that he's unwittingly lied to her; that he's forgotten that his evening plans are considerably different than they might normally be. He sighs at his scattered mind, and changes trains at the next station.


	2. New in the Old

The flat may have once been modest, but aggressive expansion had, in the years since, joined together several modest flats into one compound that is now almost the entire third floor of the building. Q trudges up to the windowless landing, types his code into the push button lock and lets himself into the warm, soft apartment. The mail slot is labeled _Honeychurch._

The décor is wonderfully familiar, with it's leather bound books and wood paneled walls. Delicate lamps cover all the persian rugs and foreign tchotchkes. It smells like old paper and green tea. It's the most English place he can imagine, and that's why he loves it. He sets down his laptop bag in a floral print chair and strips off his coat next to it. He moves his mobile phone into his pants pocket, because even during unconventional working hours he's still technically on call at all times, should an agent need direction.

Berenice has heard him coming, but doesn't stand up when he enters the dining room with it's dark wood table and ornately carved chairs. She raises one dark eyebrow at him and snorts.

"I cannot believe you're only twenty-seven years old and have to wear a fucking tie and loafers to work everyday," she sneers.

"What's wrong with it?" he replies. "No one but you seems to have a problem with this."

There's a million better come backs to her usual abuse, but he's the older sibling and likes to think he has some sort of restraint. In his kinder moods he can feel sorry for her, because she might have actually have it worse than he does. Smarter, more unstable, substance dependent, and failing out of university. And she still finds the time and the will to complain about his shoes.

"That's enough of that," Kurt says, appearing from the adjoined kitchen with warm bowls of pot roast. "Good, son, you're here. Take a seat." His father kisses him on the head in greeting before sitting down with his meal.

Q slides into the chair next to the head of the table, and immediately feels his back twinge unhappily. He wonders grimly if he'll last long enough to finish his dinner without having to get up and move around a bit. But here it doesn't worry him like it would elsewhere, because there will be no excuses or need for explanation. They'll call him by his real name and know his life story and even with all the old, unresolved anxieties that accompany boyhood homes, he'll still leave refreshed by the honesty of it all.

"Your mother's in Ukraine, won't be back until Thursday," Kurt says with a bitter little smile. "She's informed me that the three of us should not worry our pretty little heads."

"Naturally," says Berenice coldly, and Q resists the urge to ask her how high she is.

Kurt addresses him. "How was work?"

"The usual, I suppose," he answers, thinking of Bond and then deciding quickly not to think of Bond. The agent and whatever the hell kind of game he's playing should not be allowed to infiltrate here, of all places. Q smirks, and adds, "Murder and espionage, the usual."

"Met anyone new and interesting?"

"Well, yes, but if I told you I'd have to kill you."

"What would your boyfriend think of patricide?"

"Considering I have not acquired a boyfriend since you asked me last week, I don't think he'd have much to say on the subject," Q returns his father's grin. Berenice looks vaguely disgusted by the ease of their conversation.

"That might actually be the only way to make you seem even crazier than you already are," she says, sickeningly sweet.

Bond has already proved today that he has no restraint. "You are _really_ one to talk about crazy," he replies through gritted teeth, sending a spasm all the way up his back and into the base of his skull. He rises from the table, taking a deep breath and starting to pace. The pain subsides enough for clear thought to return.

"This is not dinner table conversation," Kurt says, with a hard glance at Berenice. But that is the furthest he'll go with her, no matter what sort of mess she's made of herself. To Q, he says, "Don't they have you on any medication for that?"

"Prescription NSAIDs usually let me sit down for about an hour," is Q's response, cracking his neck. "I don't want to take the risk of trying anything stronger."

Berenice sends him a venomous glare. Definitely high as kite, and belligerent to boot.

"And that chiropractor you were seeing didn't do any good?" Kurt intercedes.

"He says it happened too long ago for it ever go back to normal."

Kurt shakes his head regretfully. "If only we'd spotted the injury sooner, maybe this all could have been avoided."

"It's not your fault," Q says immediately, on instinct.

The land line rings from the study, then, and Q sees a glimmer of hope.

"Oh, that'll be Rivka," his father announces. "She said she'd find a way to call tonight."

"I've got it," says Q, and no one impedes him from striding swiftly into the next room. Receiver pressed to his ear, he greets, "Hi, mum."

"Hello, darling, how are you?" Her voice is tinny, and he can hear rapid bouts of an indiscernible Slavic language in the background.

"We're okay. I mean, we're the same," he replies. "How's Ukraine?"

"Violent, but perfect," he winces a little at her word choice, though he should be used to it by now. She continues, "I'm feeling a book coming on, depending on how this all plays out. At the very least The Guardian will be begging for my article. I talked to the most interesting family today, you see, the eldest son is in a coma because of a beating he took in a riot last Tuesday. Tragic, but oh so interesting."

"I can imagine."

"And how was your day? How's Berenice?"

"She's—" For a moment, he pictures himself telling Rivka that her daughter's a genius, prone to even worse mood swings than him, and she's drowning her powerhouse of an overactive mind in IV drugs, placing herself on the fast track to early death but intent on taking everyone around her on the worst roller coaster of their lives before she goes. It's quite a mouthful, and the main problem is that both Rivka and Kurt already know this. "She's herself," he says finally, because for a moment there everything seems so terribly hopeless.

There's a pause on the other end of the line. He figures his mother is probably conferring with whoever she's staying with or asking a stranger on the street what he or she thinks of the conflict, but for a second he lets himself believe that maybe she's contemplating Berenice with sincerity, rather than passing, half concerned interest.

"How's work?" her voice reappears. "Are you sleeping? How's your back?"

Like a slap to the face, he's reminded that the route of all his sister's problems may be simply that he is the favored child.

"It's fine, I'm fine," He says, suddenly exhausted. "Do you want to talk to dad?"

Q goes back into the dining room and passes the phone off. He remains standing, avoiding Berenice's gaze, hoping for something unidentifiable.

After the call has ended, he bids them goodnight, kissing them both with varying degrees of enthusiasm in return. Outside, a light rain has begun to fall, misting his shoulders and hair and making him hurry toward the underground.

m m m

007 is scheduled to be in the field for three days. Five days pass, and little is heard from him, until on the sixth day he connects to Q-Branch for assistance. Q is out of the office, running on the treadmill in the basement of his apartment building, and since all Bond wants is the schematics of a Venetian opera house, Khadija rightfully feels no need to call in the overlord.

At midnight on day nine, 007's radio beacon switches on, off the coast Sri Lanka.

Rescue teams are in the water half an hour later, sifting through what appears to be the remains of a thirty foot sailboat, blasted away by heavy artillery. And, of course, there's James Bond, unconscious, bleeding, and somehow still clinging to a scrap of debris as though he actually has something in London to live for.


	3. Hanging by a Thread

**Author's Note: Thank you much to all who have reviewed, followed, or favorited! You're all lovely.**

The weekend and Monday turn into a sleepless affair—a major operation is going down in Tajikistan involving the coordination of field agents and double-O's and bureaucrats all needing direction and all getting routed through Q-Branch to do so. Tuesday morning things are beginning to sort themselves out, agents trickling back home and returning equipment. Q releases himself, having gotten all of four hours of sleep in the last three days, heading to his flat and crashing fully clothed into a bed full of sticky notes and half read novels.

In the morning he's feeling, thankfully, calm and contained. The flat's still a mess, and his body's a bit of a mess, too, but at least all of that distracts him from Bond, whose been invading his thoughts alarmingly often over the last ten days. He spends the first two hours of the day cleaning, putting the viola back in it's case and the books back on the shelf. The oil paints go back in a drawer with the soldering kits and one of several wireless routers.

At the end of his efforts the one room flat's crammed full of rubbish regardless, but it's controlled rubbish now, all in it's proper place. It reminds him a bit of his mind, held together by shelves and cabinets, until the slightest disturbance sends all the materials spewing out onto the carpet in an orgy of creation. At first, it's intoxicating, the feeling of new thought guiding his hands, where food and sleep drop away as unessential. Work is done hours early, and he can nearly predict what the next necessity will be before any orders have been passed down. For a while, he soars beautifully. And then three days later, he's trembling and writing poems in ketchup on his pillowcase.

He showers at nine and dresses in one of his nicer three piece suits. The fresh air on the way to the tube does him good, a rare sunny day in London seeming to perk up the entire city. No one gives him strange looks as he chooses to stand on a half empty train. A girl tries to flirt with him as he buys a cuppa a few blocks down from Vauxhall, and it's flattering, rather than the mild irritation it would be under the cloud cover.

In Q-Branch, the minions are peaceful, the software and the hardware teams playing nicely. Khadija looks well rested, perfecting a modified Sig Sauer, and Julian isn't bitching out the interns for their latest minor security breach. Q decides there's no need to escape and takes to working in the open space in front of the desks, where there's more of a feeling of companionship as he stands in front of the plasma screens. It's these sort of days that problems seem far away and disconnected, and he doesn't feel any pressing need to think of Bond or Berenice or his mum in Ukraine or his father, retired and home alone. His vertebrae can be forgotten while standing up and his mania is carefully stored in it's designated, rubbish filled hiding place.

Naturally, it can't last.

m m m

By noon, he's met with two field agents in need of materials and passports and sent them on their way to Venezuela. He's vetoed two new prototypes and directed another to Accounting for approval. A double-O calls in for info pertaining to current movements of Syrian troops and after some easy, vaguely entertaining hacking the required particulars are passed down the pipeline.

Tanner shows up when he's beginning to contemplate lunch, the older man in shirtsleeves and carrying a Ziploc bag full of unrecognizable metal bits.

"What the hell is that?" Q snaps, but can't muster any anger into his words.

"007's Walther and watch," replies Tanner resignedly, plopping the bag onto the desk beside on the monitors.

"How did this happen?" Q marvels at the shredded, melted steel.

"We're not entirely sure on that point. It looks like something from a World War II era tank, don't you think?"

"Well, presumably Bond knows. There was no explanation when he mailed these back?"

"Oh, no one's told you? He's back in London. Down in Medical."

Q's head pops up, despite his best efforts, stopping in mid sentence from what he was reading on the nearest screen. "He's willingly in Medical?" he inquires as nonchalantly as possible, bewildered.

"If by 'willingly' you mean we picked him up half dead in the Indian Ocean and he hasn't been saying much since, then yes."

"Oh, dear," says Khadija, approaching, then, to hand Q a newly finished lab report.

Tanner leaves shortly after, and Q can drop his last attempts at trying to appear blasé. His demeanor probably doesn't matter that much anyway—even though the workers in Q-Branch aren't much prone to gossip, it _is_ Tanner's job to be in the know. And since nothing has been mentioned, Q can only assume that no one has a problem with whatever Bond's endeavoring to do.

Except Q, that is.

He scurries back into his office, notes that the sunlight landing on all the flat surfaces has been ruined, just as Bond has ruined him with one brief kiss.

"That fucking arsehole," he murmurs, trying to figure how he can construct this bout of anxiety as only a friendly concern. A ding from his laptop speakers informs him that 009 has just switched on her earwig, and a moment later her voice is requesting the rebooking of a plane ticket and a forged work visa. Q quickly creates the necessary documents, and has them printed close to 009's current location in Saskatchewan. It's a nice little task that requires just enough thought and precision to not have his brain implode over what is growing into a slow, deep loathing of James Bond.

m m m

He really does try to go straight home, and he truly gives it an admirable go. But meters from the door his feet carry him back toward the elevator, where he raises a long finger to select sub-level one. He watches himself do this impassively, while his thoughts are preoccupied by a string of helpless swear words.

Down in Medical, the universe shows him mercy.

The nurses won't let him in, even though he can hear Bond speaking lucidly on the other side of the curtain. It's just like him to wake up and already be monologuing to M, none of that half drugged, in between bullshit that humans tend to resort to after they've just been part grated, part burned, and part beaten. Q briefly entertains the humorous picture of Bond, sitting in a hospital bed in full, unscathed tuxedo, clean shaven and flirting incorrigibly with all hospital staff to cross his path.

They turn him away and, finally, his feet obey.

At home, the events of the day have left him off key, trapped temporarily in an infinite loop of MI6-with-a-dash-of-manic paranoia. For thirty minutes he goes back and forth between the front window latches and the door, locking and re-locking one and then worrying that he hasn't locked the other suitably, or perhaps not at all, and is just remembering doing it on another day. The cycle continues until he trips and falls into a sitting position on the foot on his bed, causing his back to screech silently with pain. He curses Bond again for winding him up like this and resorts to stripping off his jacket and tie, pulling out his laptop, and working through a few hundred thousand lines of code in the hope that it will quiet his synapses.

When he awakes from the absolute engulfment of programming he finds that it's one in the morning, and rather than calming him, his work has simply unhinged him further.

Some part of him manages to shake it's head and half heartedly _tsk-tsk_ when he doesn't sleep. But it's swiftly overruled by the rest of his consciousness urging him to _do,_ to _make, _to _live._ He rolls up his sleeves to the elbow and digs out his charcoal pencils. The mess will be legendary, but there is no room for that now in the glorious machine of creation he has succumbed to, wherein walls and the back, empty pages of books are fair game for ideas and sketches and blueprints. He stops only long enough to look down at the palms of his hands and see vast oceans of knowledge and understanding and promise.

The doorbell crashes through his thoughts like a machete; his first emotions are of utter, incontrollable rage at who would have the nerve to interrupt such delicate, profound revelations. He stumbles toward the door anyways, though, fiddles with the six separate locks of varying degrees of security. He flings the door open roughly, revealing a slick, gray-suited James Bond, with just the hint of a pink burn visible above his pressed collar and on the backs of his brutal hands. He looks Q up and down, undoubtedly noting the disheveled dress shirt and slacks stained by the same charcoal ash that's spread across his cheek and neck and forearms. Taking in the insane, shameless, scintillating glister in the depths of Q's eyes.

He sees it all, then steps forward and in one smooth motion has Q's lips pressed against his.


	4. Contrast

Bond has a simmering fervor about him that clears up Q's mind for just a few moments, making him just aware enough to be embarrassed by the state of himself and the state of the half dark flat. Bond's home must be the exact opposite of his well lived-in mess of a living space; Q imagines it as barren and tasteful and massive, with a closet of baby blue silk shirts and cashmere scarves next to the drawer of rolex watches. The only food, caviar and the fixings for a vodka martini.

He pulls back a moment, stares into Bond's hard face. He's carefully unreadable, though an intriguing earnestness shows through him as he keeps his hands, gentle but firm, against Q's neck. Q can feel raw skin on the other man's fingertips, and he's briefly surprised that Medical's let him out while he's still so singed. And then it occurs to him that Medical probably _hasn't_ let him go at all, but Bond does whatever the hell he likes.

"How'd you find where I live?" Q asks, through the haze of mania and of Bond's touch. Q's MI6 file is wiped clean, containing only a birth year and description of his position in the organization. All of his accounts, rent, and mail are under pseudonyms. His original resume, with his full name and biography, is so confidential that only M has access to it—to the point where Q himself isn't entirely sure where it's hidden. But Bond is exceptional; always has been.

He doesn't even wait for an answer to his own question, because his fleeting coherence is already failing him. Soon he's pulling Bond back toward him, closing his eyes and losing himself again in rough skin and smooth fabric. Bond's kisses are all-consuming, thorough, capable of melting through solid concrete. And Q, his manic brain spiraling wildly through the cosmos and culminating into this one fantastical moment, is matching Bond step for step.

Bond kicks the door closed with one foot, and in the same movement has Q pushed against the nearest wall, hands sliding down his thighs, pulling at the buttons of his shirt. It's brisk and passionate and would be overwhelming, if Q hadn't already been so out of control when the doorbell rang.

For long moments they grasp at each other and breathe deeply, desperately, and the world falls apart and rebuilds itself over and over again.

Finally, Bond closes the millimeter of distance left between them and guides him the few feet toward the centrally located double bed. They collide with the mattress, unseparated, among broken pencils and wax paper and sheet music. Q has the sense to move the portable propane torch off the nightstand, where he's got a feeling it'll be knocked over. Bond's lips trace his chin and jawline. Q can find no words for this—it occurs to him that he may have wanted this more than he initially hypothesized.

m m m

Later, when the only light comes in from the lamps on the street below and sweat has turned cold on warm skin, Bond pulls the duvet around them. He presses his forehead to Q's and speaks the first words he's said to the quartermaster in nearly a fortnight, a cryptic leer on his lips, both of them still vibrating slightly with intensity.

"Well, you're quite something, aren't you?"

Like everything action the agent has undertaken in the last few weeks, Q has know idea what to do with this. But lying here, staring at the scars on Bond's chest (there's quite a few—Q always reckoned there would be, but the sheer amount of old bullet holes and red patches and poorly sewn together lacerations is unnerving, while simultaneously handsomely rugged), he doesn't feel much need to do anything, except breathe, and savor.

And that's what's truly remarkable about this little, monumental encounter. That five hours ago Q was careening impotently through the voids of his own intellect and now all he wants to do is fall asleep in the arms of James Bond and forget about tomorrow.

And he does so. Elegantly.

m m m

He's got no alarm set, but it's likely he would have slept through it anyway. He awakes only when the midday tendrils of sunlight stretch across the room and invade his eyelids.

With a sigh that is neither surprised nor impressed, he finds that Bond is gone, leaving hardly a trace of his existence and certainly none of the bliss of the night before.

He showers, puts on clean clothes, looks around the jagged disarray of the flat, but can't find the will to put things away. He checks his laptop to find an instant message from Khadija from two hours ago asking where the hell he is, and then two emails from Tanner asking approximately the same thing. He's forgotten that spy agencies generally don't take unexplained absences lightly, and so he grabs his bag and hurries out the door.

At work, though sane again, compared to the state he left in the night before, he's not accompanied by the feeling of relief that usually comes with returning to the world of the grounded. Bond's visit seems to have stabilized him, but in it's place is left a discarded confusion, where Q is stranded in trying to unravel Bond's motives. Which is, of course, impossible, because the man's a fucking secret agent. But even with this blindingly obvious realization, he can't help but mull over the evening. It settles on him that it's entirely likely that Bond simply couldn't drudge up any of his usual fuck-buddies, and so decided to pursue the blushing quartermaster because he was easy, nearby, and noticeably crazy.

There's nothing superfluous in Bond's life. Q may only be a physical necessity, nothing more, something to alleviate the boredom between missions.

The thought is so disheartening that it almost distracts Q from the continuing, crushing humiliation of knowing that Bond has seen what he looks like when he's full blown manic and has access to everything his flat, instead of just the exhilarated, easily distracted version of Q that pops up at work every now and again. Because Q has been clever—there is a point when he knows he's too far gone to maintain any pretext of normalcy in an office environment, usually when the poems begin to get written in more pliable foodstuffs—and those are the days he calls in and stays home, letting the mania wear itself out. But now Bond has seen the inner sanctum, seen Q without barriers, and the worst part is that, somehow, he's cured it.

The phrase, _'Well, you're quite something, aren't you?'_ drifts through his head yet again.

Khadija, apparently, has been fending off all minions for the morning, sensing that Q isn't in much of a state to handle things effectively. She enters his office early in the afternoon, notes the dark circles under his eyes, and asks, "When's the last time you ate real food?"

He contemplates her question, then shrugs.

"I'll find you something in the break room," she says purely, non-judgmentally, in a way that doesn't seem quite fair, because Q's done nothing to deserve her tolerance.

"You don't have to mother me," Q says tiredly. "I have a mum who dotes on me enough."

"Well, I am a mother, so it's not all that much of stretch, sir," she quips, with a small smile. "And I'm sure there's some proverb that justifies my ascertaining that an effective, well-fed quartermaster is an effective MI6."

Like most people who come in contact with him for any period of time, she's probably discerned that there are several things that are not quite right about Q. But she can accept him (all of them can, he supposes), because MI6 is full of people like him, with varying skills and varying degrees of chaos in their mind and bodies.

She returns, apologetically, with only tea and stale crackers, but he's already on his way out, laptop under one arm and looking too frantic to be healthy.

"Are you alright?" she asks, a bit taken aback by his sudden switch. There's a nervous flash in his eyes that comes across as a little unbalanced, coupled with his unkempt clothes and hair.

"M wants to see me," he responds tightly, and without another word he's lost down the nearest hallway.


	5. Prep

**Author's Note: Hello readers! Sorry for the long interval. And this chapter might be shit. So you've been warned. But thanks for being here anyways!**

He takes the stairs two at a time up to the executive offices, hoping the aerobic exercise will quiet his mind and perhaps make it bearable to sit down for a few minutes, if necessary. His efforts appear ineffective, though, when he spills onto the top floor with his mind still whirling apprehensively over whatever awaits him in M's domain. A part of him is convinced that this must have something to do with Bond, but he's too off-kilter to establish a full connection. He's glad Miss Moneypenny doesn't ask him if he's alright—she bids him good morning without looking up from a stack of paperwork, then forgets his presence a moment later. He waits, shifting from foot to foot.

"Oh, sorry. He's ready for you," she waves him through the padded door distractedly. "Good luck."

Q does not give himself time to dwell on her last comment before hurrying into the next room.

M, seated behind his massive, oaken desk, stands when Q enters and offers a hand. M does not ask him to take a seat. It's always at least somewhat soothing when Q is reminded that his boss has done his research, as the only one with access to the quartermaster's file. MI6 is not an overly comfortable place to show weakness, but it is a pretty excellent place to store secrets.

The seat across M's desk is occupied by Bond, who's employing his field agent powers of invisibility so that Q isn't even aware of his presence for a few odd moments. When he realizes they're not alone, he looks down at Bond over one shoulder, and Bond doesn't give any sort of acknowledgement, eyes pointed straight ahead.

Q keeps his gaze carefully neutral and says to M, "Reporting as requested, sir."

M settles back into his chair, looking slightly troubled. "Have you ever heard of the Martele brothers, Q?"

"Yes. As I understand it 007's been in pursuit of them recently."

"Indeed. What do you know about their history?"

"Not much."

M reaches for a file next to his left hand, and begins to read briskly. " 'Sterling and Phillip Martele, ages fifty and forty-one respectively. Born in Juneau, Alaska, USA. Alleged leaders of criminal organization dealing in extortion, insider trading, and five hundred eighty-seven other counts of currency related crimes. Placed on international wanted lists fifteen months ago when they infiltrated and attacked a field office of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations after sending threats to several agents of said office. Reports indicate that they then fled the country.' And now they've popped up in a dozen other places across the globe, hence the reason we've become involved."

Q waits for him to continue. He's not sure why he's being let in on any of this, as usually whatever M needs from him does not require so much back story. Bond leans on one arm of the chair behind him, kneading at the bridge of his nose.

"A few weeks ago, 007 pursued their trail of havoc from Switzerland to Mozambique to Saudi Arabia to Bangladesh to Sri Lanka, coming to a head, as you know, when the Marteles struck back. They seem to have stepped up their operations considerably, from minor economic threats to more of a terrorist cell with very little discrimination when it comes to who they target. We've latched on because we discovered a collection of their operatives in London with the plans for several large scale cyber terrorism opportunities that they were contracting with a young hacker named Briar Komaromy to execute. He's infamous for his refusal to work with any sort of team once hired, so we can assume that the Marteles have had very little contact with him since they hired him eight months ago and handed over the plans."

M pauses here, and for a moment Q thinks he's expected to offer some unknown insight. Instead, M just gives Bond a withering look, and continues. "Approximately seven months ago, 007 'accidentally' shot Komaromy twice in the chest in our preliminary investigation of the Marteles' activities. We managed to keep it unreleased, though, so our sources tell us that due to Komaromy's discreet nature the Marteles are inclined to believe that they are still in business with him. And they have a meeting scheduled via email for Friday at a green energy convention in Copenhagen, where we assume that Komaromy was intended to receive payment and put the final phases of their plans into action against Queen and Country remotely."

Q gives him a blank look, but M doesn't see it because he's digging around in a hefty manila file, before pulling out one photograph. "This was Komaromy."

Q takes one look at the picture and his eyebrows hit the ceiling. "That is...uncanny."

It seems to be a passport photo, of a young man with dark brown hair and a thin, tapering face. His eyes are a green, hazel-like color and his skin has a tanned, slightly olive tint to it in the lighting of the picture. If Q didn't know better, he'd think Komaromy had been his twin, with no glasses and more teeth in his smile. He looks up from the photograph to see M's expression, and already doesn't like where this is going.

"If we can lure the Marteles into thinking that Komaromy's ready to go with whatever they have planned, then we can at least pin attempted terrorism on them, and that'll ground them long enough for us to get the other pieces in place to get a longer sentence and involve the Americans," M has leaned forward and is staring up imploringly at Q, who can feel his heart rate increase uneasily at the thought what this operation is going to necessitate.

"Do you think you can help us, Q?" M asks kindly enough, but it hangs in the air as not really a question at all.

"With all due respect, sir, do you really want to send the head of a whole MI6 department into the field? I don't want to say I'm indispensable, but—"

"My point _exactly_," Bond murmurs from behind him.

Q raises an eyebrow at M, trying to influence his thoughts. He imagines himself leaning over the desk and whispering conspiratorially _"Remember how I'm completely, certifiably mental? You really want that mess in the field?"_ but he doesn't.

Because he has a hard time believing that M hasn't thought this over, taken Q's follies into account already. And he's decided to take the risk regardless, because perhaps he's verging on desperate. Or the Americans have something worth trading for.

"He's afraid of flying, anyways," Bond adds in, eyes still on the carpet.

"Go by train," M replies simply.

"I'm not afraid of flying," Q says, sharper than it sounds in his head. "I would prefer train, though, thank you."

"007 will be running security detail, of course, since he's been on the tail of the Marteles for so long and he's had the sense to not show them his face. Q, I trust you've had your annual self defense refresher," M says, looking increasingly hopeful.

Meanwhile, Q tries very hard not to physically shudder at the thought of being with Bond alone, especially if this is how all their interactions from now on are going to go. Not to mention the mention the possibility of Q ending up manic for some key portion of the trip and blowing the whole operation, with only Bond to make sure he fights his way back to sanity. Q can't stop the pleading look he sends in M's direction, inwardly begging him to reweigh the pros and cons here.

M looks between the two of them, but says nothing except, "If you're going by train, it's going to take a bit longer, so you'll need to leave tomorrow midday to make it to Copenhagen on time. And Q, you'll have to have your branch work up some passports and documents. Apparently, Komaromy had been known to travel with one or more bodyguards, so that's your cover, 007."

Q sees an opening. "Sir, might I take a few of my colleagues from Q-Branch with me? In case I need another set of eyes to unravel Komaromy's work?"

"Who do you have in mind?"

"Khadija Bahar. She's the best I've got. What kind of risks do I need to brief her on?"

M bites his lip briefly but says, "I'm expecting this to be a pretty clean operation. You'll have Station C with full back up close at hand, ready to grab the Marteles. I wouldn't send you out there if I didn't think this would go smoothly." He sends a pointed look in James Bond's direction, before continuing. "I think it's safe enough. She can pose as another bodyguard."

Q is dismissed a few moments later, leaving stiffly as M smiles ruefully and calls after him, "Your country owes you a debt of gratitude." The padded door closes behind him, he turns to Moneypenny with a heavy, slightly ragged sigh.

"So you're doing it, then?" she asks.

"Does it look like I have a choice?" he replies tiredly. "At the very least a moral obligation."

She smirks. "You could always defect."

"That's more effort than it's worth," he answers, with a thin little smile. _And really_, he thinks, _there's only so many nations out there who will hire a half crippled, homosexual man with unmedicated manic depressive illness, no matter how brilliant I claim to be._

Moneypenny gives him a sympathetic eye roll, and begins to hand him things. First, Komaromy's laptop and file, to see what they have to fool the Marteles with. Second, the files on the Martele brothers themselves. And finally, freshly printed train tickets, with connections in Brussels and Cologne before Copenhagen.

Q heads toward the elevator, arms full, just as he hears Bond close the door to M's office.


	6. Goodbye Babylon

"Khadija, it's finely happened!" he announces, with mock elation, upon entering back into Q-Branch. "We can finally run away together."

"Oh, it's a dream come true!" she gasps, mirroring his drama, and leaps to her feet with surprising agility. "When do I finally get to abandon my husband and children?"

"Tomorrow, dearest," he replies, and he loses his humor quickly as he's reminded of the trials ahead. "The operation's codenamed 'Hydrangea'. I need you there so I don't lose my mind."

It could almost have been a joke, but they both know that wouldn't quite be true.

"'Hydrangea'," she muses. "How lovely. We're not flying, are we?"

"Train. And we have yet to have our cover identities printed. I'm afraid we've got a few more hours work ahead of us," he says, handing her one of the files from Moneypenny.

She looks slightly discouraged about the extra time, but sporting, as always.

"And we'll need to call a staff meeting to establish who will be looking after things while we're gone," he adds. "This is going to be a bit of a mess, but my destiny has been predetermined, it seems."

Khadija lowers her voice so that it dives just below audible for anyone not in the immediate vicinity, even though the minions are, as per usual, absorbed in the constant movement of work. "Is it going to be particularly dangerous?"

"I've received assurances that it won't," he answers, equally clandestine. "But don't worry your family. Everything's top secret, of course...I assume this is not your first field operation?"

She shakes her head knowingly. "I was on active duty before your time. Transferred here when I got married."

"Well, that makes me feel a little better about dragging you along," he says, and mentally pats himself on the back for thinking to bring her with. She's brought a glimmer of hope that, if everything goes to plan, this might not be completely miserable.

But the feeling of possibility fades as the day turns to evening and his exhaustion settles onto his shoulders uncomfortably. He lets Khadija go at six, even though there's still ends to be tied. He spends an hour distracted by 002 breaking into an embassy in New Delhi and rattling off all the information she can dig up inside it over the air waves. Eventually her findings become sensitive enough that he can reroute her up to M's office for direct interpretation. He goes back to studying Komaromy's file, and realizes with a frown that most of the intelligence photos they have of the man show him wearing jeans and a t-shirt. But quickly, Q can rationalize his own wardrobe choices by noting that the eco event in Copenhagen is a black tie affair involving several world leaders, and there's no evidence to suggest that Komaromy would not have adjusted his attire appropriately. But the pondering of it sends Q off on a tangent that boils down to his reflection on whether the only line between good and evil is a preference for three piece suits, cardigans, and laceless loafers.

He awakes from these revelations and switches gears to going through Komaromy's laptop, which has the beginnings of a pretty potent looking virus on it for the Marteles. Q improves a few mundane details of the outline so that it looks more polished, but is paranoid enough not to make any real enhancements should it fall into the wrong hands. With luck, the Marteles won't know what they're looking at anyways.

At 8:30, he receives the false travel documents for himself, Bond, and Khadija, just as he's becoming absorbed in the Martele files. The motive is the hardest thing to find behind their crimes, beyond general psychopathy. Most of their more grievous acts have all been committed in the last year and a half, since the brothers went abroad. He mulls over what the change must have been—what catalyst sent Phillip and Sterling off on their globe-trotting murder spree. The intel gives no further insights. He reminds himself that the inner workings of the criminal mind are not what he needs to be worrying about right now.

Moneypenny comes down to pass off a mission file to one of the underlings at nine, and is momentarily outraged to find that Q hasn't gone home yet. After a tongue lashing, and with some very valid points inflicted upon him, he pulls on his backpack full of confidential files and evidence and heads for the tube.

Back in the warm, semi darkness of home, he pulls out a little rolling suitcase and starts throwing in dress shirts and weapons. He digs through a few closets to find two Walthers, a Sig Sauer, three unusued, slightly modified grenades, and to his own surprise, a cosh. They all go in the bag along with a ice blue tie and an elegantly tailored dinner jacket. The case is nearly filled when his private cell phone rings, making his entire body seize temporarily, in the way that only a call from one's mother can.

"Evening, mum," he says, sounding far more calm than he feels. "Back from Kiev?"

"Yes, as of yesterday. It was lovely. Are you coming for dinner tomorrow?"

"Oh, no, I'm afraid not. I'm off on a business trip in the morning."

He can hear her shock, even though Rivka says nothing but, "Are you flying?"

"No, the train. Can't say where, you understand."

"Oh, yes, of course! Well, have fun, dear. And one more thing: have you seen or heard from Berenice this week?"

His blood runs cold. Rivka, as is the routine, has shuffled on through the mundanities of his life and saved the latest Berenice bombshell for last. As though it were a mildly interesting tidbit. "No, have you?"

"Your father says not since last week." An iota of distress creeps into her voice.

Q waits, heart thumping uncomfortably. Nothing from Berenice for a week. There's only so many possible outcomes, and they're all grim.

"Oh, well, I'm sure she'll turn up," Rivka says, her tone back to it's usual euphoric bounce. "Have a safe trip!"

And she's hung up before he can get in another word.

Feeling an unsettling jumpiness come on, he resolves to shower and shave and try to get some sleep. Straightforward tasks with a solid end and plenty of deep, peaceful breaths in between.

He climbs into bed, some part of him still under the illusion that sleep is a feasible ideal. Twenty minutes after fitfully, half-heartedly closing his eyes he's up again, grabbing for his wallet and tumbling out the door in pajama pants and a t-shirt. His feet decide that he needs a new extension chord (which isn't entirely untrue—he's meant to buy one for a month—but it's not particularly relevant either) and as the clerk in the convenience store appraises him with a troubled look he pastes on his best Briar Komaromy shit-eating grin, the one he'd practiced in the bathroom mirror for an hour. The whole episode leaves him hoping that these activities are all just an over abundance of nerves, and not an omen for what his mental health in the coming days will be like.

Back home and with more tranquilizing breathing exercises, he thinks he might be fading into sleep, forgetting Copenhagen and Bond and Berenice and every other goddamn thing that never lose a beat in their pursuit of his unhappiness.


	7. Making Believe

He rises earlier than he'd planned, but can't find the will to go back to bed. He doesn't have to catch the train until noon, and it's only eight, so he decides to unpack the viola from it's case in the corner and run through a few melodic minor scales that keep him just occupied enough. He drifts into a Rimsky-Korsakov next that's mostly harmony but has it's charms nonetheless. His thoughts eventually swerve from the sheet music and he's no longer playing from anything other than the recesses of his own mind.

Afterwards, he adds a few bits and pieces to his luggage, tucking away his heavily encrypted laptop, next to Komaromy's, safely in his shoulder bag. He dresses as he usually would for a day of work, then folds away his glasses and digs out the contacts he keeps under the sink. He blinks a few times to get used to the foreign objects, thinking that it must have been a least a year since he's bothered with them. He prefers the comfort of glasses and the assurance that they age him as much as he can be aged, given his physique.

Once these tasks are done, he doesn't allow himself to pause and reflect upon the fact that he now must deal with whatever the next few days will bring. He keeps his momentum moving forward, as he engages the alarms and locks on his front door in a state of dream-like incoherence.

And soon he's trotting down the escalator, into the lower level of St. Pancras station, eyes scanning the crowds for the familiar swagger of Bond or Khadija. With an inward, deflating sigh, he catches sight of Bond, and they make eye contact a second later as Bond looks up from his watch and spots him above. Q approaches him skeptically, with brisk, dutiful strides, through the throngs of other travelers.

The moment Q's in arm's reach, Bond reaches for his wrist and with a swift, clandestine dart of his eyes in the direction of the nearest CCTV camera, he pulls him behind a nearby pillar. Q raises a suspicious eyebrow as Bond projects his cerulean, soulless gaze straight into him.

"We should probably have a discussion," Bond says, and if Q didn't know better he'd almost think the other man is tentative.

Maybe it's just hours of trying not to think clearly about the impending mission catching up with him, or residual feelings of unfairness over the whole situation itself, but Q lets himself retort sharply. His lips twist into a nasty sneer and he spits, "Oh, you want to talk _now_? Well it's a bit fucking late for that. Strange how you didn't seem all that intent on conversation when you were showing up my flat in the middle of the night."

Anything that may have been hesitation in Bond evaporates instantaneously. "I knew this would happen. I knew you'd behave like a child."

"That's what you think? Shit, maybe we don't need to talk. Maybe I'm only worth one fuck anyways."

Something unfamiliar flashes in Bond's eyes that makes Q want to rein in it, though he can't quite pinpoint why. Q softens his voice ever so slightly and adds, "Whatever the hell's going on here, you seem to know better than I."

Q knows this is a little unjust—sure, Bond has made all the advances so far, but he's not exactly been resisting in any way whatsoever—but the double-O's such a mystery he's not sure what to say. He had expected, on some level, for this conversation to arise at some point, but he never imagined these to be the circumstances. And now that he's here, everything he's wanted to ask or do has slipped away into the nether regions of his brain, unrecoverable.

Khadija, as always, saves the day by appearing from the messy mass of passengers, grinning in greeting. She's dressed sharply, business like yet still formidable, and her and Bond together are dead ringers for private security. Q glances at the three of them together in the mirror image off one of the train windows and thinks, if just for a moment, that they might actually pull this off.

The train for Brussels pulls out promptly. They take seats in a little enclave of four chairs and while Bond shamelessly orders a drink, Khadija pulls out a copy of the latest NME. Q lasts a good twenty five minutes of avoiding Bond's eyes before the stress of it has his spinal muscles spasming unbearably, and he leans down to grab a novel out of his bag. Without any explanation, he gets to his feet and heads down the narrow aisle to the end of the car where there's some vertical space around the doors. There, he holds onto one of the stabilizing metal polls, opens his book (an E.M. Forster he's been meaning to finish off for a week), and lets his back pain unravel itself.

Thirty pages later, Q is vaguely aware of a familiar, lumbering pattern of footsteps growing closer. His eyes skitter from the print and down to Bond's unmistakably expensive pant legs. He raises his head and a questioning eyebrow with it.

"What are you doing?" Bond asks coolly. It occurs to Q, now, that seemingly unreasonable and prolonged disappearances of personnel are just the sort of thing that would set a double-O on edge. Or perhaps Bond's just scouting for the nearest bar.

And still, he hears himself reply, "Reading."

"Standing up?"

"How else?"

Bond appraises him in a millisecond. "You know, I don't think I've ever seen you sit down for longer than five minutes."

"Catching on, I see."

"Perhaps that's why you're so intent on trains," Bond murmurs, eyes scanning absently, automatically, the space around him. "Relative freedom for the naturally fidgety."

"I'm not naturally fidgety," Q retorts, eyes pressing blindly into the print of his novel.

"Adaptively fidgety, then," Q is aware of Bond's lips curving mischievously upward, and the older man's enigma grows. "Some sort of persistent spine or leg injury that has not been seen to properly."

"It's been seen to as properly as it ever will be," Q sighs in answer.

"Chronic," deduces Bond. "A childhood plight carried into adulthood."

"Well, aren't you clever," he deadpans.

"Not quite done yet," Bond says, unable to keep the triumph out of his voice as his blue gaze bores into the top of Q's bowed head. "I bet I know how it happened."

"No, you don't."

"Parental abuse."

"Very wrong."

Bond pauses, as if trying to decipher his words.

"I'm not lying," Q says tiredly. "Not everyone in MI6 has had such a tragic upbringing."

"Fell out of a tree."

"Do I look like an outdoors sort of person to you?"

"Well," Bond says, and Q is assaulted by a smug, devilish smile. "That only leaves automobile accident."

Finally, Q looks up from the book. "Well, I see why they haven't fired you yet."

"When did it happen?"

"I was ten," Q says, before he can hold back. Bond's stare is so irritatingly disarming. "I was the only one injured, but didn't realize for a year when I wasn't growing as expected."

It had been May, he remembers when it first got serious. They were flying to Israel to visit his grandparents and he'd sat crooked for the entire trip, face pale from the agony. It was the last time he'd flown, and about the time he'd started having manic episodes. So much had arisen in such a short period of time that suddenly all the concerned attention had collected, rather uncomfortably, onto him; in retrospect it was foreshadowing for the rest of Berenice's life.

"So that's why half of MI6 has the subconscious urge to protect you?" Bond smirks.

"No, actually. I think it's more of a deeply buried fear of what I can do to their internet profiles should they look at me the wrong way." He feels a smile coming on and suppresses it quickly.

"Good to know that you've got a read on my deepest urges." Bond gives one last smoldering, self-satisfied look and disappears in the direction of the closest alcohol.

m m m

In Brussels they change trains without incidence, and then they embark another short hop to Cologne. Fewer and fewer words are spoken as the day progresses, an anticipation building between the three of them as they inch closer to their destination. In the early evening they climb aboard their third and final train, and settle in for the twelve hour ride to Copenhagen.

Q drops his things off in his private sleeping compartment, and realizes swiftly that there's no way he'll get anything like true rest in the next few hours. The rational part of him says that he should tuck in anyway, grab a book, control all emotion. But within seconds he finds himself exiting the compartment and purposefully striding down the narrow hallway. He wraps on a door two meters down the car and hears, over the roar of the train wheels, the quiet thump of silk socks against carpet.

Bond slides the door open a moment later.

"Fine," Q says, and a little of the challenge in his voice from their conversation in London is back. But with it is a new element of tense, stomach-knotting dread. "Let's talk."


	8. Curves and Edges

Bond looks startled by his sudden appearance—or, rather, as startled as he ever is by anything, with only a raised eyebrow and a questioning gaze as his betraying features. Q, feeling bold, marches past him into the compartment, and tries to look comfortable by leaning against the pillar between two windows.

Bond's eyes swivel over him for a moment, and his intent has a strange, predatory tenderness to it. He crosses the room calmly and sits down on the edge of the bed. "What would you like to talk about?"

"I would like an explanation, first of all."

"For what?"

"Don't play dumb," Q says, and it comes out sounding less sharp than he intends.

Bond smiles like he's got a secret but doesn't meet his eyes. "I was testing a theory."

"Were you proved correct?"

"Unfortunately for both of us, yes."

Bond looks up and there's a moment where it seems like he's trying to project his thoughts through silence, as though convinced they're on the exact same subconscious wavelength and Q should understand. Understand like all the ladies and gentlemen Bond manipulates with just a blink.

Puzzled though he is, he thinks something does reach him, or at least bubbles to the surface. Just a name, the sort of name that gets written in the depths of a personnel psych evaluation and is just the sort of thing you don't mention around a double-O if you intend to stay in one piece.

_Vesper._

There's a few others in the file, the farther back you go. Wounds that have sealed themselves but won't heal, leaving knots of dead tissue that hurt on rainy days. He's read the file all the way through (he always prefers to know what he's dealing with, and so has read the file of every double-O. Though he's aware this is probably not ethical, he figures at this point it probably goes in the same gray area as sleeping with an operative you're entrusted to enable in the field), and in it he's found detailed descriptions of the events, noted each of the commonalities that have lead to the barely alive man that sits before him expectantly.

People have a tendency to die in Bond's arms. Specifically, people he loves.

And Bond, for all his suavity and sophistication, has a type that he goes back to again and again when he wants true connection. The sort that need a bit of protecting, but have a wit and allure that is impossible to ignore. The sort that won't let him get away with the mundane bullshit but understand that he's only partially intact and is going to stay that way, by choice or by necessity, it doesn't really matter. The sort that have their own darkness, carefully tethered. These are the ones that Bond finds it far too easy to fall in love with. And, as the cycle goes, these are the sort that end up dead.

And why should Q be any different?

All he manages to say is, "Oh."

And then:

"I suppose it's too late, then?"

Bond gazes at him frankly. "For me."

Q turns his eyes to the floor, tests life in waters that are neither cerulean nor scarred. He sighs, and though not hugely flattered at being able to identify himself as just another in a never-ending sequence of lost loves, he realizes that he was right in his predictions that first day in the National Gallery: that anything with Bond would end badly. He was wrong, though, in thinking that it was at all avoidable.

Bond starts to get up stiffly, presumably to escort Q out. Q watches the other man heave his half-shattered bulk to his feet with a grimace, and smiles inwardly. He knows it's a little fucked up to find solace in Bond's moments of impairment, but it's too familiar in himself to not find comforting.

The double-O motions a hand toward the door just as Q takes the two steps forward and kisses him softly, just beneath the chin. Bond's relief, though likely temporary, is palpable, and he places a gentle hand against Q's cheek, guiding him to his lips and sliding an arm around his waist.

"If you can manage it," Q murmurs, breath warm and close. "I think we should live in the moment."

"As you wish," and it's more than a little melancholy.

m m m

The train beats on through the night, and Q slips into his shoes without a whisper. Bond's breathing doesn't even change as he wakes, and he nearly scares the living hell out of Q when he reaches out to grab his hand.

"You're going?" Bond rasps. He's face down, halfway speaking into the pillow. His back is exposed, and Q's eyes dart away to admire it leisurely, as though they have all the time in the world. Even the burns and scabs can't ruin the elegant lines of a well toned spinal column, of thighs and forearms and the sweep of where a neck meets shoulders. He squats down as long as he dares and studies Bond's intoxicatingly vulnerable eyes. They intertwine cold fingers.

"Still on the job," Q smiles crookedly. "Don't want Khadija to worry."

Bond lets out a breath and watches him leave without another word.

m m m

Early morning dawns and he once again meets Khadija and Bond in their secluded collection of seats. The tension has dispersed, the day is unexpectedly sunny, and with Bond's skin inches away he feels a quiet sanity that overshadows everything in optimism. In the living, breathing daylight it's easy to forget that future and all the unknowns that Bond has introduced. Easy to leave his worries as the kind that only lurk when on the edge of exhaustion. Soon he's locked into a debate with Khadija over the pros and cons of using Python as an entry level tool, and Bond is watching, a mildly amused little smile on his face.

A joyous guffaw erupts from some unseen crevice of the train, a crackling, half screeching sound that doesn't sound like it could come from an adult human being. Even while irritating, it's infectious, and they snicker discreetly because there are times when annoyance at those thought less evolved is so easily overruled by giddiness.

Q thinks that if _this_ is what field work is, then all the double-O's need to quit their bitching and return their goddamn equipment. He almost says this to Bond but instead resolves to whisper it later, sensuously and in chosen privacy, when the backlash can be used to his advantage.

In Copenhagen, Q pulls on sunglasses against the uncharacteristic light and gets Briar Komaromy's passport stamped. They flag a taxi and let Bond off early, who sets off to make clandestine contact with Station C. Khadija has fallen into her role flawlessly, transforming into a terse, efficient bodyguard the moment she steps onto foreign soil. In the elegant, Scandinavian modern hotel, she stays two steps behind him and her eyes flicker toward every spot of cover, every exit, every camera. Q is escorted to his room and she keeps a threatening, yet still respectful, distance.

Delivered at the heavy oaken doors that are the entrances to their side by side rooms, she dismisses the bellhop and catches Q's eye. He leans in to her murmur.

"Keynote address begins at seven. Cocktails at six. We'll be armed but you shouldn't be. Bond is bringing back earwigs for all three of us, some of your prototypes that are nearly unreadable. We meet the Marteles tomorrow morning."

He nods, and it's not an effort to be fearless. Not when Bond is on his way back and he's got a suitcase full of firearms and a plan that is so well laid that certainly it must work.

Q turns toward his door, key in hand, but realizes a moment later that Khadjia hasn't moved. He raises an eyebrow at her.

"You and Bond..." she starts hesitantly, eyes narrowed.

He waits, noncommittal.

"Nevermind," she says abruptly. She throws him one nervous, nearly pitying smile before disappearing into her room.


	9. Flora and Fauna

The room is high ceilinged and airy, the furniture simple and elegant and thoroughly uncomfortable. On the bedside table is a vase of hydrangeas—presumably Tanner's doing, as he named the operation and is an unabashedly avid gardener. He's responsible for their code names, too, also flower related: Q is to be called Jonquil over the airwaves, Bond Hyacinth, and Khadija Amaryllis.

He spreads his things out amiably, fully aware that there is a possibility of his room being searched. He employs the safe for his laptop and uses a few Q-Branch tricks to make it harder to open for anyone under a genius IQ. He lays a few of Komaromy's things about so that it all seems quaint and settled and then practices murmuring Komaromy's name with the correct Irish lilt. He slips into a slick, black suit and tries to look fresh for the evening, not as if he's just spent the last twenty-four hours in transit.

Bond appears just as he's straightening his tie in the mirror, his footfalls almost imperceptible.

"Our contact at Station C is called Orchid," Bond says, pushing an earwig into Q's ear gently. "He's got a direct line to Julian in Q-Branch if needed."

Q just nods, feeling an uncomfortable taste of nerves.

"You look lovely, by the way," Bond growls lusciously.

Q gives him a skeptical look. "I always dress like this."

Bond shrugs. "I suppose you always look lovely then."

"Well, obviously," Q snorts.

Bond grabs him them, pulls him forward without reservation and kisses him until he can't breathe. It's a classic James Bond kiss—the perfect combination of rough, amorous, warm, and the complete erasing all excess thought that may distract from the perfection of skin and against skin.

It's the sort of kiss that leaves Q with the strange feeling of both sanity and euphoria, control and at the same time the relinquishing of all higher function to Bond. It brings with it a peace that defies logic and understanding, even when faced with foreboding truths and likely patterns. He wonders if it has something to do with the weather, if everything would seem so peachy if a wintery mix was snapping down viciously from the heavens. This is an easy answer but he knows it's a lie. What's far more honest is that falling in love with Bond is like drawing a treble clef—once you get started in the brisk, curving lines, the only way to even hope for a beautiful outcome is to continue until you've reached the end, wherever that may be. Even after all that, you may be left with a lopsided design, a mockery of it's possible grace. But to pause in the middle, halfway through that first loop, would be to most certainly ruin everything.

"Ready to go?" Bond asks against his lips.

"If we must."

He lets the double-O leave first, giving himself a moment for collection before following him out into the hallway.

m m m

The event is even more formal than he'd expected, the women in evening gowns and the men in tuxedos. It doesn't really make all that much difference, though, considering Q wouldn't be caught dead in a tuxedo ever, unlike Bond, who seems to actually go out of his way to wear them whenever even remotely practical.

Bond and Khadija fan out immediately, pasting on the resolute expressions of private security without incident. Orchid introduces himself through the earwig and informs them that all nearby radio chatter sounds perfectly ordinary for an occasion such as this.

Q approaches the bar and attempts to look casual without sitting down. He orders a water with lemon on the rim and ignores Bond's snort from the earwig, not bothering to explain that alcohol is the single substance that without exception sends him down the path to psychosis faster than anything else, a fact he figured out at university that has made him completely dry ever since. The woman seated next to him makes uninteresting conversation on the oddly sunny weather. They lapse into silence and she eventually shoves off to find someone less dull.

He makes eye contact with Khadija through the sea of mingling people. She's wearing a black sleeveless dress that emphasizes her curves well with sensible looking shoes on her feet. She has a slightly shimmery grey head scarf on over her hair that's in nice contrast to the fabric of the dress. He realizes she's a lot like Bond in mien—they both have a curious glamour to them that's not necessarily a given at their age. He figures it's probably a reflection of the unquestionable confidence guarding their every motion.

Bond breaks through the crowd, predictably, to order himself a vodka martini. Q heads for the h'ors d'oeuvres table and finds himself overwhelmed, facing mountains of food he can't pronounce. As a person who, admittedly, subsists mostly on bread and microwaveable Indian food, it's all he can do to keep his head and grab some artisan cheese before retreating off again.

He spends the rest of his time scanning the mass of wealthy party goers, not entirely sure what he's looking for. Presumably the Marteles are among them somewhere or will be soon, but he's not positive he really wants to go up to them unscripted. His shyness dictates that he'd much rather have them approach him and set the terms for whatever he should expect, as the plan initially specified. He's not sure he has the wherewithal for improvisation. But the evening progresses and he doesn't see the ginger-haired brothers anywhere among the increasingly drunk multitudes.

Bond seems to be getting antsy with the inactivity, elegantly slugging down a few more martinis and flirting with a handful of the partygoers to fend off boredom. Khadija is fully content to people-watch from a few invisible corners, checking her phone every now and again. Finally, the liquid mass of people begins to move in the direction of the auditorium as the time for presentations grows closer. Bond and Khadija move back toward Q subtly.

It's here that several things happen in rapid succession.

The three earpieces crackle to life unexpectedly, letting out a roar that has Q, Bond, and Khadija wincing uncontrollably at the sudden sounds of gunfire and merciless screaming coming in over the airwaves. They hear Orchid groan almost inhumanly; he wheezes a few more times and then goes silent. More of the rapid popping of automatic weapons and Station C is incapacitated. Bond is the first to realize this and rips out his earwig, reaching for the Walther under his arm and converging on Q. Before he makes it a second hail of bullets is heard, along with the shattering of glass—it takes Q a moment to register that these noises are no longer coming from inside his ear but have erupted from across the room.

All hell is breaking loose and without warning bullets are soaring past Q's head and it's all rather unbelievable, so unbelievable he's afraid he's dreaming or that he's so manic he's hallucinating and he doesn't even realize it. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Khadija fall to the ground and can't fathom why.

The next thing he's aware of is the full weight of Bond smashing into his left side, sending them both cascading to the floor and into a field of broken glass.


	10. Instinct

**Author's note: Hello, lovely readers! Thanks for all the follows, favorites, and reviews! I cannot express how appreciated they are. **

Pain exploding in his shoulder is what clears his mind, gets him to focus his vision and try to make sense of the end of the world as he knows it. Everything, for the moment, has the volume turned down, except the blood pumping in his ears.

Bond is already pulling him to his feet roughly. Q glances at his right shoulder with a very detached sort of horror, hardly registering it as his own. The black fabric is damp and little shards of red stained glass protrude from the flesh. The pain has already numbed itself and blood is dripping down his forearm and between his fingers, hot and thick.

Q observes all of this calmly, even as chaos surrounds them.

People scream and scatter and duck for cover and some just drop where they stand. One sound, however, penetrates the voices and the gunfire, and it is far more chilling. A deep, crackling, snorting laugh, the kind that sounds like it can only spring forth from a demented child. Q scans the writhing bodies and finds the red-haired source, holding an AK-47 with eyes full of mirth.

Sterling Martele.

Bond is dragging him by the hand toward a side exit into the lobby, and it's all Q can do to get his legs to obey. This is all far too real. He trips over a body—his hand slips from Bond's when he realizes it's Khadija, and suddenly he can't breathe. He collapses next to her, sees the the bloody hole where the bullet entered her left eye, the exit wound mercifully covered by her scarf.

"Khadija," Q chokes, as though trying to wake her. "Khadija."

Bond is yanking at him again, saying violently, "She's gone. We need to move, Q." And then Bond has him by the collar of his jacket and takes the last few feet to the door in three long strides. In the strange quiet of the lobby, they're not allowed pause, realizing on the spot that they can make no further escape without Q's laptop and considerably more weaponry than they have on them. Bond starts up the stairs at a run. And running, as it happens, is something Q understands. Those hazy, manic nights on the basement treadmill come back to him and he pulls ahead of Bond quickly. By the time they make it to the fifth floor Bond is wheezing like a horse and Q is barely breathless. The pace doesn't slow until they reach Q's room, whip open the door and engage all the locks behind them.

No communication is needed, now—Q has fallen back onto training, onto instinct drilled into him, like every MI6 employee, wiping himself clean of emotion in favor of the task at hand—and he cracks open the safe, pulling out his laptop and snapping it open in one smooth motion. It's a trivial matter to hack into the hotel's mainframe and bring up the feeds from all the surveillance cameras. Blood runs down his fingers and onto the keyboard. In his peripheral vision, he's aware of Bond moving efficiently about the room, collecting all the cleverly stashed firearms.

"They've turned the convention center into a hostage situation," Q says dispassionately. "Everyone they haven't killed, that is. And they've got guards on all exits around the building. They'll figure out we're not down their among the dead or the captured soon enough."

"And then they'll come looking for us up here," Bond grunts, frowning out the window. "We'll need to mobilize before then."

"Bond," Q murmurs, and the other man looks his way. "They knew we were coming."

"Of course."

"That laugh on the train...that was Martele," Q's voice drops to a whisper. "We were doomed from the start."

"Somewhere along the line, the information got leaked," Bond says matter-of-factly, blank eyes searching the room.

"There's another 9 mil under the bathroom sink," Q offers. "I'll get it."

Bond nods. Q slips into the adjoined restroom, trying very hard not to think, but the moment he sees himself in the mirror he begins to unravel. It's not the dark liquid staining alabaster skin—he's never been squeamish about blood, his or anyone else's—but his own look of creeping insanity. Maybe a normal agent could keep his shit together, but no one has ever mistaken him for stable. He takes in one shuddering breath and tries to zoom in on one of the floor tiles, absorb every detail of the delicate, handcrafted print on each of them. He wills himself to keep his head, to tighten his grip on reality. He does not think _her_ name and he does not think about the fact that destruction and creation have always gone hand in hand. The urge to create a macabre mural on the nearest wall is overwhelming.

His body moves before his mind does—his glasses case goes flying across the room and then he sinks down to lean his torso over the bathtub, reaching for the temperature controls and flicking on the shower head. Lukewarm water leaks down through his curls and down his collar but he squeezes his eyes shut tight, painfully tight. _Her_ name crosses his and his throat closes but he ignores it because he can't think. He won't.

Years pass and then Bond's leather shoes appear as Q's letting out long, ragged breaths through his mouth. Bond evenly murmurs something along the lines of "And what do we have here?", then reaches out and turns off the water without missing a beat. He kneels down, pulling a towel with him, and guides Q back from the edge of the tub, back into the world of the living and the sane.

Bond softly dabs away at the blood and the water and then lays two large, thuggish hands against Q's cheeks, tethering him to the earth.

"She had kids," Q rasps, barely audible. "She had a family."

"It doesn't matter," Bond's words are callous, but his eyes are not.

Bond's hands are warm, warmer than anyone ever expects them to be. He projects such iciness, such smooth edges, that he ends up, misleadingly, like Danish Modern furniture. His true self, that of the warm yellow light and the cushy chairs and persian rugs, is so carefully hidden beneath his surface. But he's much more than any one temperament—he's so full of graceful contradictions, all of them sinfully endearing. Dark and light. Smooth and rough. Old and new. Murder and salvation. Destruction and creation.

Q can feel himself coming undone under his gaze. He swallows, and his words come out barely audible and uncontrolled. "I can't do this. I'm psychotic. Truly. I shouldn't be here and it's my fault and I'm absolutely crazy."

"We all are," Bond sighs simply.

His eyes move to the wounds in Q's shoulder just as the door is kicked open viciously and three armed men flood into the room. Bond is up and moving immediately, whipping out his Walther and pumping two rounds into the first attacker. The second is too close; he knocks the gun from the double-O's fingers and seconds later they're locked in hand to hand combat. The third slips past them both and makes the mistake of looking straight at Q.

If there's one thing that MI6 does exceptionally well, it's basic training and refresher courses for all high-level employees, regardless of whether they're expected in the field or not. Two weeks annually, groups of thirty employees are taken out into the Scottish moors and worked to the bone through every possible threatening scenario. All while carrying eighty pounds of gear and getting three hours of sleep a night, they are expected to be able to hit bull's eyes with their eyes closed and three fingers broken. It is the ultimate boot camp—breaking them down to the point where they can be rebuilt as weapons of mass destruction. The purpose of the training, of course, is for moments like this, where only instinct alone with allow survival.

The attacker gets one throat punch in before Q wakes up and promptly breaks his arm, with a satisfying crack.

The man crumbles to his knees; Q acts, ripping off his own tie, taking one quick step and winding it, tight and unforgiving, around his attacker's neck. He snaps it taut around the thin, delicate throat and tightens it without hesitation. The attacker struggles ineffectually, gasping, turning red, then an unholy shade of blue. His pulse quickens and then slows under Q's fingers. Finally, it peters out completely, and he falls forward, his head rupturing for good measure against the side of the bathtub.

Q throws the tie at the wall as though it were burning his skin and stands, breathing hard and trying his absolute best to keep his mind incapable of rational thought.

Bond finishes off the last invaders with a vicious stomp kick, wiping his hands off and turns around. His eyes take in the corpse on the bathroom floor next to Q, who's looking like a deer caught in the headlights. He offers a hand and Q steps over the body toward him.

"You alright?" Bond asks.

"Fine," says Q curtly.

Bond glances back at the bathtub impassively. "He probably didn't have to die."

"You're one to talk," Q snaps, motioning vaguely toward Bond's kills. He starts to walk stiffly back into the bedroom but Bond's voice stops him.

"Is he the first person you've ever killed?" Bond asks, almost sounding amused, though one look at his face dissuades any humor.

Q pauses, eyes roaming over Bond's now disheveled tuxedo. His eyes betray him. "Take off that bloody bow tie, will you? It looks completely ridiculous."

And that's answer enough. The only question that remains is one they are both frightfully aware of—and it's the matter of how long Q's calm will last.


	11. Left Unsaid

**Author's Note: Okay, so a short chapter, and a long wait. I know I suck. I'm sorry. I just have a hard time writing action sequences, because it all seems so neat in my head, but on paper it ends up clunky and abstract. I'm gonna try to stop sucking. I promise. **

Bond has produced a length of heavy duty rope—Q doesn't bother to ask where it came from, figuring that these sort of things just appear from some corner of the universe to Bond and it's better not to question them—and the double-O has elbowed through a window and sent the end of the rope cascading down the to earth five stories below, tying the other end to the foot of the bed.

"We're rappelling down, then?" Q asks, glancing over his shoulder out into the night.

"Once we're on the ground we can make a break for it."

"On foot?"

"M's left us a car in the lot."

"It wouldn't happen to be an Aston Martin, would it?"

"Haven't the faintest idea what it is," Bond replies, almost smiling, tucking weapons into various bodily crevices.

"The hostages downstairs..." Q drifts off with a thoughtful scowl.

Bond looks up. "Don't even think about it," he says briskly. "There's no time in this world for heroic acts and even if there was, we wouldn't be the heroes. All that matters now is that you get out alive."

Q glances over at him and has the distinct feeling that Bond has probably guessed that Q isn't like the field agents or the double-O's, the slightly sociopathic orphans that they tend to be. No, Bond can likely read on him that he's got a family in London or Manchester or wherever who all smile around a dinner table and go to work and wonder what their mysterious government worker son and brother is up to.

And Bond, for all he claims to not be a hero, is doing everything in his power to make sure that that son and brother doesn't die in a hotel in Denmark for no good reason at all.

They move swiftly, determinedly, around the room again, feeling the throaty pressure of looming disaster. Bond wordlessly tosses him an under the shoulder holster and Q puts it on in the same movement, securing a fully loaded Walther in it's grasp. He snags a heavy, fish gutting style pocket knife and shoves it into his pants pocket, after using it to rip out the hard drive of Briar Komaromy's laptop. He breaks the hard drive into tiny pieces and flushes them down the drain, carefully stepping over the bodies to reach the toilet.

Bond is giving hesitant pressure to the rope leading out the window when Q returns. He avoids the jagged remains of the window and climbs out onto the ledge, evaluates the fifty foot drop. In the waning, silhouetting light, Q thinks he sees Bond shrug optimistically in the split second before he puts his full weight on the rope and leans out into oblivion.

When there's no surprised yell or sickly thump, and Bond's hands stay firmly latched on the cord, Q turns away and slips his laptop into a tightly secured backpack. He does one more quick scan of the room, sees nothing compromising. He lets Bond get halfway down before he climbs out into the open air after him, taking care not to dwell on how far below the ground is. He braces his legs against the building and wraps the slack in the rope tight around his hands before, then begins to lower himself downwards, a cool breeze blowing through the thick night air. It stirs the few curls of his that aren't matted to his head with a poultice of tepid water, sweat, and blood.

He lets himself down slowly, working on instinct, some part of training lodged away in the back of his mind that letting him know how one would rappel himself down the side of a building should the need arise. He's thankful for the activity of it, the familiar, focusing sensation of an urgent, solitary task. He's so immersed in it that he doesn't hear the thud of determined footsteps until there are bodies hanging out the window twenty feet above him, several large men aiming guns down at his head. He swears bitterly just as the first bullets start to rain down, and makes a snap decision as he looks and sees that Bond is nearly on the ground.

He takes one hand off the rope for the longest half second he can imagine, snaps out the serrated knife from his pocket, and cuts the cord in one smooth motion. There's no time for fear until he's soaring through the humid darkness, waiting years to meet the earth. He hears Bond's startled grunt through eardrums made of jello.

His body reacts before his brain does, and he hits the ground in a graceful but heavy roll that knocks the wind out of him. His back cracks unhappily but doesn't seize. Bond sits up beside him, stoically spitting out a fragment of a tooth but otherwise unscathed, and giving Q a look somewhere between admiration and indignation for the unannounced fall.

A moment later the hail of gunfire starts again, their movements giving them away to their pursuers. Q feels bullets slide past him, feels a sudden stinging at his hairline and between his third and fourth rib. He glances down and lets out a stunted breath when he sees it's only a graze. Bond pulls him to his feet and then they're running again, an action so comforting to Q that he can easily ignore the pain in his side and the blood running into his eyes.

They sprint through landscaped gardens and across sandy paths. Ambient lighting illuminates their feet but they avoid it, and let the shouts of the men behind them disappear into the background.

Bond stops at the edge of the parking lot, surveying the area, then turns back to Q with a carefully composed expression. "You're alright?"

"Fine," says Q, baffled, until he's reminded of the stiffness of the dried blood that's settled over three-quarters of his face. He reaches up to feel the the raw path the bullet cut, two inches above his eyebrow, and winces. A headache begins to climb up his neck and crouch behind his eye. "Superficial wound. And you?"

Bond just snorts at the question, then darts out onto the asphalt.


	12. In the Midst of Life

**Author's Note: Oof. Well that was hard to write. Hopefully I'll have the next chapter up soon. The title of this chapter is from a short story by William Frye Harvey, the full quote being _"In the midst of life we are in death."_Thanks for reading!**

The car is not, in fact, an Aston Martin.

In reality, it's a dirty orange Ford Fiesta with a broken hatchback. Very nondescript, an excellent escape vehicle. Bond gives an audible groan when he sees it.

"Oh, shove it," Q grins wolfishly, despite everything.

Bond turns to him, a hint of amusement in his eyes, just as they hear gunshots once more. Bond groans again, and gives a fleeting, almost wistful glance toward the Fiesta before deeming the coming guns too close for a sprint toward the still distant car.

"Determined, aren't they?" he murmurs, reloading his Walther with his eyes on the horizon. Lights are weaving through the courtyards, shining in their eyes. "Take cover," Bond adds, but Q has beaten him to it, taking aim from behind a Fiat.

The lamps illuminate a swarm of six armed bodyguards, and in the very back, trusting in their protection, are the two red headed Marteles, one taller than the other. Q glances at Bond and they both adjust to focus their sights on the brothers. They don't consider how outnumbered, how outgunned, they are in comparison to the criminal force. Such thoughts are useless. Later Q will remember and marvel at this first understanding of the double-O state of mind—the unimaginable idea that sometimes carelessness is the only way to effectively operate, even in a world that has acquired such precision.

Their attackers come into range and the agents open fire sparingly, trying to conserve bullets. Q gives a quick flick of the wrist and throws the fishing knife from his pocket; it imbeds itself in the throat of the nearest guard. Q fights the smile off his face, unnerved by his own reaction. He's always been such a sucker for success, and it's so much easier to kill from a distance instead of via strangling. _This is why wars are fought_, he thinks. _This is why Bond can still limp around as he does. _

One of Q's next two shots are direct hits, and Bond hits another three men effortlessly, leaving only the Marteles and a few of their unnamed gunman. But they're advancing fast and Q has to scuttle over to another car to keep covered. A bullet slides past his knee, splitting his pant leg but preserving the flesh. He dives behind an ancient Alvis and hardly notices as his exposed forearm is ravaged by the rough pavement. He allows a moment to collect himself again before popping up over the hood and trying to keep a steady hand to take aim.

To his right, Bond daringly stands up. Bullets rush around him but the darkness obscures him enough that he can fire off two shots, of which both implant themselves firmly in the chest of Sterling Martele.

And then Q sees several things happen at once.

Phillip Martele lets out a startled, anguished cry—surprisingly, Q finds himself penetrated by this outburst of agony, but he barely has time to recognize his own thoughts as the affair unfolds. Bond pauses just long enough to confirm his kill before sprinting toward where Q crouches behind the Alvis. He makes it halfway when Phillip springs up, a Glock appearing in his fingers. Even across the lot Q can make out his hand shake, but somehow this doesn't deter his accuracy.

Ages later Phillip has a bullet in his head just below his ear, Bond is on the ground, and Q is running.

In the field report, Q will have a hard time putting together the exact sequence of actions that took place. It all happens in the space of what feels like a single second, not enough time for rational thought or conscious decision making. No time for regret, not yet. As has become the trend in the last few hours, he's acted on instinct, stowing away fear and regret for afterwards. In the present, though, staring at the carnage around him, he comes to the logical conclusion that Phillip has shot Bond and so Q has shot Phillip; in short, everything's gone to hell.

The blood has turned the pocket square of Bond's jacket a potent shade of dark red. He's gasping for breath, reaching for the Walther just out of his arm's length when Q drops down next to him.

"Fucking hell," Q mutters, and Bond turns his head enough to attempt to focus his eyes on the other man, whose stripping off a section of his shirt and trying to apply pressure to the wound. His back twinges as he shifts to something resembling a sitting position, with one thigh under Bond's head. Emergency medical training is coming to him in bits but he's got none of the supplies he'd need to contain the situation—no kerlix to stuff in the injury, no IV to pierce a vein. His head swivels around the empty, night drenched parking lot, then back to Bond, whose making unrelenting, silent eye contact with him.

Which is when Q finally becomes aware of the screeching, half hysterical voice in his ear.

The earwig, still tight inside his ear canal, blocked out from adrenaline and gunfire. Julian Gibbins' voice, hoarse from worry and shouting, routed in from somewhere in the bowels of Q-Branch. Q imagines someone in Station C giving their last breath to put them through to London. He imagines Julian worrying that he's been shouting at dead people for an hour (which isn't entirely untrue, but Q's not going to think about that). Q interrupts with a surprisingly calm, "Hello, Julian."

For a moment, there's only a stunned silence, so Q continues. "This is Jonquil, requesting immediate Medevac for Hycacinth. I trust you to already have back up units headed our direction. I have reason to believe that Station C is severely incapacitated. Amaryllis is KIA. There is also likely an ongoing hostage situation in the convention center, though that cannot be confirmed at this moment. There is almost definitely civilian casualties."

Julian pulls himself together on the other end of the line. "Jonquil, can you approximate your location?"

Q does his best, and after, Julian says quietly, "It's a shambles, isn't it?"

"I'll let you make your own judgement on that," Q says briskly, eyes foggy. He keeps a stable hand against the struggling pulse in Bond's neck, the other hand soaked in blood where it's pressed against the double-O's throbbing torso wound. He adjusts the position of his shoulder blades to get his back to quiet down, but he can't keep the grimace off his face. Bond, still, staring at him intently, manages to rasp out a few words. "Don't...sit down...for me."

"Well, then stop dying, dammit," Q snaps. Sitting still is becoming difficult, but he endures. He's slipped into an unreality, somewhere past mania, past true pain, in the way that only sudden trauma brings.

Bond gives a pathetic, exasperated chuckle that sounds wet with blood. He brings one hand up to rest, weakly, on Q's hip, as though he's the one doing the comforting.

"Fucking hell," Q mutters again, wiping at a smear of blood below Bond's eye with one thumb. Q thinks that maybe this is the time to give ultimatums, if there is a time for such things. But that would involve admitting that James Bond is truly on the doorstep of death, perhaps even the threshold of hell, and Q's not going to concede that. He thinks of Berenice and knows that denial is so much easier.

Instead, they just look at each other. Blue eye to hazel eye. Innovation to wisdom, youth to age. Creation to destruction and destruction to creation. And it's enough.


	13. Transmitting in the Blind

He's fairly sure she speaks English, like most of the Danish people, but he doesn't feel like talking and so they communicate through vague gestures and winces and determined expressions. He's a little worse off than he thought, and now that he's fully come off the adrenaline of it all Q's limbs have turned leaden. The nurse, a woman with a dirty blonde pixie cut and pink lips, motions for him to unbutton his shirt as she reaches for more plasters and rubbing alcohol wipes. Her eyes are dull, not from apathy, he thinks, but just a lack of surprise at any injury he can conjure up.

His fingers fumble with his shirt buttons. He has to turn his full brain power toward this task; no more distracting himself with trying to unravel her irrelevant mysteries.

She cleans out the memories of the bullets on his skin. Some are deeper than others, bloodier and gorier, but he flinches at the sting of the disinfectant on each one of them. She pulls shards of glass the size of an eyelash from his shoulder. He wonders if it's a good thing he's feeling pain now—not just in the wounds but in his spine too, from his perched position on the edge of the bed. But he's afraid the loss of his numbness will bring back the mania, and he honestly doesn't think he can manage insanity at a time like this, when everything else has gone so wrong.

The nurse finishes by gently wiping all the blood off his face, under his chin and behind his ears. There's not much she can do at this juncture about the dried stuff in his hair, so he dismisses her efforts with a wave of the hand. She patches the slice through his forehead, hands him a few aspirins to swallow dry, and saunters off to join her colleagues in their attempts to treat the huge influx of people that the Marteles have tried to kill in the last few hours.

The room she's left him in is a double, and in the bed to his left is a sleeping man with a walrus like mustache. Evidence of a woman's presence is in the chair by his bed, but the owner of the beret and the bobby pin has vacated their seat. Outside the room, Q's weary eyes watch, uncomprehendingly, as bodies in blue scrubs rush back and forth, stretchers push through the hoards, voices shout and sob in English and Danish. It's an impossible maze to his exhausted mind, but nevertheless he tries to push himself off the bed and onto his feet. He can hardly remember why, but some strong reserve inside him is urging him to go out there, into the throngs of busy, bleeding people and find someone called Bond.

But his body doesn't react to his commands and a moment later he finds himself slumped against the scratchy sheets, curling into a ball against a sudden, inexplicable chill. And then he's slipped into a heavy, frozen sleep.

m m m

Auditory senses return to him before sight does, and with closed eyes he perceives a voice that morphs into familiarity. It's Eve Moneypenny's cadence, her presence by his bed. She prattles along quietly in conversation, presumably on one of the untraceable, uncrackable, Q-Branch modified mobile phones entrusted to all high level employees. Slowly, he begins to understand her words.

"Yes, the KIA is en route to London...Tanner's supposed to be notifying the family...Yes, sir...no, it seems mostly under control now...we've recovered the bodies of the Marteles..."

Q's eyes flicker open and he's confronted with what appears to be Moneypenny's black and white, houndstooth patterned coat. He snaps his eyes shut again against the unexpected brightness. She's already seen he's awake, though, and after a second she keeps talking, but with a soft hand laid against his cheek.

m m m

He awakes some time later to the prolonged, unnatural twilight that all nighttime hospital rooms seem to possess. While the sky outside is black once again, the inside of the room is still lit by bedside lamps and repetitive machinery, bathing only pockets of the room in fluorescence. Moneypenny's shaking him awake, and her coat is a little less unbearable when it's hidden partially in shadow.

"Q," her voice is just below a whisper, and he wonders if it's for his roommate's benefit or his own.

Feeling considerably more aware, he asks immediately, "Where's Bond?"

"He's just gotten out of surgery. We're transporting him back to London."

"He's alright?"

She raises an eyebrow. "He's not dead."

And all Q can choke out is a single syllable, flooded with relief. "Good."

Moneypenny straightens up. "We need to go."

"Why?" The thought of moving his limbs is unfathomable.

"They want you back in London immediately. You're one of the few people alive who knows the whole story of what happened last night, and certainly the most conscious."

He surprises himself by finding the strength to return to a sitting position. "How many are dead, besides..."

She waits an awkward beat to see if he'll finish, then says, "I'm not sure exactly. Lots of wounded, though. Regardless of numbers this whole thing's a nightmare for international relations." She helps him to his feet, and, keeping one hand on his elbow, says, "M seems wracked with guilt. Or at least worry over his career. This was supposed to be a milk-run, truly," she pauses. "I'm sorry, too. About everything. About Khadija."

He spends a full minute biting his lip and looking at the floor before he can reply. "So what happens now?"

She starts to walk toward the door. "We fly back to London and you get debriefed, then we figure out how the hell this happened."

"Fly?"

"It's a LearJet. And we're the only passengers."

"Oh," he says, thinking that maybe, _maybe_, he won't have to spend wasted time explaining to her and the crew why there's no way hell he's going to sit down for the flight.

m m m

It turns out not to be much of an issue, though, as beds have been made up in the spacious cabin and he can stretch out, headphones full of Nirvana and Billy Joel and Kaiser Chiefs and Dan Auerbach. They've even extracted some of his belongings, left in the hotel room the night before, so he finishes the E.M. Forster novel from the train and dives straight into one of Josephine Humphreys', without the necessary time for reflection and introspection that is necessary between books of substance. The mania is returning, but he wills himself to hold it together just a little longer, just until he can get back to the comfort of home.

Soon London is glowing orange beneath them, fighting off the darkness from the north and the sea closing in from the sides. An aerial view is really the best way to observe England (especially at night, when it seems to be guiding light for the entire northern hemisphere), he thinks, because it enunciates the unbelievable fact that this tiny, cold little island in the North Atlantic once ruled the world.

He glances over at Moneypenny, curled on the bed across from him, her coat over her legs. It occurs to him that she knows how many people died last night and knows how Khadija's family has taken the news and knows whether Bond is likely to survive in any functioning capacity. But she's already made the decision not to tell him these things quite yet, and he finds himself a little thankful, even if condescended.

His backpack is at the foot of the makeshift bed, and as he leans over to slide a book into it he finds his two cellphones in the outer pocket—one for work and one personal. He ignores the work one and unlocks the other.

Moneypenny rouses a few moments later at his exclamation.

"Oh, shit," he says, staring down at sixteen missed calls from his mother. "Oh, shit, shit, shit."


	14. Like Evil or Truth

**Auhtor's Note: This is the second to last chapter, though I am considering a sequel. Chapter title from Joseph Conrad's _Heart of Darkness:_ "And outside the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion." Reviews are much appreciated!**

He'll admit he's been spectacularly foolish to assume that a simple location would bring him any sort of solace. He's never been lucky enough for things to turn out neatly and still isn't lucky enough for the act of arriving back in London to heal all wounds now. He marvels at the naivete it took on his part to believe that returning home would be the end of his problems.

The increasingly frantic messages from Rivka dissuade any hope of peace as they set down on the tarmac.

He's supposed to be meeting with Tanner as soon as he's back on English soil but once he tells Moneypenny what's going on she can't put up much of a fight. She's too good of a friend. He uses a few MI6 perks to make it through Heathrow and out onto the curb in record time. He doesn't even allow himself to taste the tangy, sharp London air before he's flagging down a cab.

St. Bart's is as packed as the airport—he pulls a few more credentials (and frankly he couldn't care less if he's not being ethical or attentive to security measures) to make it through the crowds of worried loved ones and sleep deprived physicians. He's spent entirely too much time in hospitals over the last few days, and he does his absolute best not to think of Bond. Once again it is the time for unwavering resolve.

He finds his mother, slumped in a plastic chair, in the fourth floor corridor.

"What the hell's going on?" he snarls, because the surge of emotion he experiences as soon as he lays eyes on her has to go somewhere.

She doesn't say anything when she sees him, just rises delicately to her feet and envelopes him in a hug. Her curly black bun brushes his cheek and he feels himself coming undone in her arms. She says nothing about the obvious plasters on his skin. Too much has happened for him to maintain any semblance of normalcy but he doesn't have any good options anymore—he feels raw, stripped, on the edge of insanity and yet still weak in every fiber of his being.

"What's going on?" he murmurs, the misplaced animosity seeping out through his feet. His body follows her into the room on the left and his mind drags behind doggedly.

Kurt sits in a recliner with his eyes closed by the window, but his breathing is such that it's obvious to Q that he's not asleep. He 'awakens' when he hears their muffled footsteps, and looks to a ragged Berenice, whose lying in bed and inspecting the IV in the back of her hand.

The first words out of her mouth are Q's name. His true name, not the letter. He lets out a sigh, in respect to the unfailingly consistent ease the dropping of his title brings. Berenice promptly bursts into tears.

He goes to her without saying anything and hugs her. She presses her face into his shredded shoulder and wraps her bandaged arms around him, leaving him to wonder when, if ever, they last embraced.

m m m

Kurt slides a cup of coffee to him across the cafeteria table, raising an eyebrow a moment later when Q makes no motion to drink from it.

"Oh, shit, sorry," his father murmurs. "Forgot you don't do caffeine."

Q shrugs, taking the tiniest of sips. His left hand taps incessantly on the formica table, changing rhythms every few bars, going in and out of syncopation and weaving through time signatures. He watches his fingers as though they are a rare insect, and knows their movement to be the only thing that allows the rest of his body to be still.

He looks to Kurt, after a long silence, and says, "When did this all happen?"

"They found her in a hotel room in Cardiff yesterday."

Q imagines, against his best efforts, what the morbid scene must've looked like. It boils down to a few needles, a razor blade, and a bathtub full of blood. His brain spins back to the present.

Kurt's eyes dart around the room. "The message was clear enough."

"Dad—"

He holds up a hand. "I know. Someone had to do something sometime."

Q sits back in his chair, ignoring the flair of pain, overcome by surprise. The future spreads out before them, a future he once thought impossible, in which Berenice goes to rehab and gets psychotherapy and _finally,_ their parents get their shit in one sock and recovery can begin.

And he knows he's being an absolute dick when he says, "It's about time." But to handle his own, similar impotence on the subject of Berenice's health at a time like this is to renounce any hope of holding it together.

Kurt gives him a warning look that Q evades.

"I heard something about a shooting in Copenhagen," Kurt starts, too clever for his own good. "You wouldn't—"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Q folds his arms across his chest, feeling more distant than ever. A letter for a name, a few days out of reach, and ultimately they're miles apart. When he took the job as quartermaster, no one ever told him it would be like this. No one ever told him having two names would mean having two such succinct identities with so much space in between. No one ever mentioned watching your best friend die and your lover shot in another country while your sister bled out at home. No one ever mentioned this because no one could have known that the job had changed. With the death of Colonel Boothroyd and the beginning of a new era it seemed natural that he should have his file cleaned out, that this occupation of his would change, subtly at first. Ramifications were never considered. They never are, not in an establishment run by those so closely associated with the double-O mentality: act now and clean up later.

The unfairness of it all, for a moment, manages to pause the movement of his left hand and mute the pain of sitting.

Kurt gazes at him, knowing there's nothing he can say.

m m m

His flat is cold and dark when he steps inside, and it's still disheveled from his brisk packing a few days before. He drops his bag and turns on the overhead light, then wanders over to put on the kettle. He's distracted halfway there by an old bike chain and his welding mask, next to a pile of sketches. His eyes bound to the oil paints on his night stand. To the bow that needs re-stringing on the kitchen counter.

He doesn't sleep for thirty hours.


	15. The Three Arrows of Time

**Author's Note: So, this is the last chapter! First, I would like to thank everyone whose favorited, followed, and reviewed. You people are the light of my life and wonderful inspiration for the sequel I mentioned in my last A/N. It should be noted that in this chapter I make reference to several characters from _Quantum of Solace, Casino Royale, GoldenEye, _and _On Her Majesty's Secret Service. _Oh and I've been cross posting this story on AO3 under the same name, in case that's useful to any of you (I don't know how, but I figured it'd be worth mentioning). Also, this chapter's a bit longer than my usual goal of between 1000-2000 words but that's largely inconsequential. There was much to be said. **

**Anyways, it has been an absolute joy to write this story and to hear your feedback, so thank you very, very much for reading. **

It feels strange, somehow uncivilized, to go about his morning routine as though it were any other day. But at the same time Q knows it to be the only civilized thing to do—to persist in the duties bestowed upon him, even in the face of trauma and death. Continue, even if we are not what we once were. He wonders if he's ever going to shake the feeling of unfairness that has descended upon him after these last few days. He wonders if he ever should.

He stands in the shower for forty minutes, puts on clothes freshly laundered, combs his hair into a vaguely controlled shape. And still, he itches at the phantom of dried blood behind one ear, his shoulder wrapped and bandaged tight.

On the train he stands, headphones on, watching the rest of the passengers move to his own soundtrack. They look ludicrous, like witless heathens, loudly expressing their happiness or their discontent or their impatience. They look completely mental, unpredictable, letting their lives poke through like unregulated children. He thinks they know nothing of resolve, of restraint, and he gets off two stops early just to make sure he's walked out any trace of insanity.

On his way down to Medical he passes 005, who doesn't show any sign of noticing him. She's speed walking, wearing a marigold sundress that's splattered with copious amounts of blood and flesh. All while muttering angrily to herself and squeezing at a stained roll of duct tape in her left hand. Appraised as they are now, Q thinks, no one would guess that he's the truly psychotic one, and she's just a woman very skilled at her profession. Unless all the double-O's, to some extent, can be classified as idiosyncratically mad.

Madness, he's come to know, is so relative.

In Medical, Molony tells him that Bond has been mostly conscious as of today, and they expect he'll pull through, pigheaded old bastard that he is. In all honesty the agent's been through worse, and though Q knows this he's already working to block the images of a darkening bullet hole and increasingly sticky asphalt from his memory. In a room cordoned off by a paisley patterned curtain Bond lays nonchalantly, propped up by pillows, a few days of stubble on his face. He wears reading glasses and a hospital bracelet a little too tight for his wrist and a gown that makes him look strangely demure. His eyes bound up lazily from _The Daily Gleaner_ when he hears someone enter, and he tosses the newspaper aside the moment he sees it's Q.

They stare at each other a few moments before Q approaches.

He picks up the discarded newsprint. "Why are you reading the Jamaican news?"

"It's my favorite paper," says Bond, as though it should be abundantly obvious.

Q raises a questioning eyebrow and the older man shrugs innocently.

"How are you?" Bond asks quietly, after a few moments of breathing the same air.

"Sane," Q sighs. "Mostly."

Bond's eyes dart to his shoulder, to the gash on his forehead. Q gives a grim smile and murmurs, "For fuck's sake, you're the one that got shot. When did you get so selfless?"

"Getting shot becomes less interesting every time it happens," Bond smirks. "Still rather surprising, though. Hardly notice the pain anymore."

"You're not quite right," And Q loves the hypocrisy of this statement, so much that he grins.

Bond holds out an arm. "And not dead either. Rather predictable, aren't I?"

Q settles into his embrace, perched on the side of the bed and leaning into him lightly. From here, things seem quite simple. No past, and a future comfortable in it's unknownness. Easy. He says, "I don't plan on ending up like all the others."

Bond looks up at him, waiting, imperceptibly tense.

"Not like Vesper. Or Mathis or Alec or Tracy or M," Q says blankly, though he knows it's cruel to speak such things aloud. "I don't plan on winding up like that, where you're left losing them and falling in love with their memory."

Bond is silent for a long time, and Q comes to the regretful conclusion that perhaps some subjects should be left taboo.

"Yes, you're different," Bond mutters finally, and it's clear he's too cautious to continue. Cautious of any kind of genuine hope.

"But plans change," Q finishes for him. "Even the most beautiful of them."

And James Bond can't dispute this, so he just holds him closer.

m m m

He goes out for lunch. Not because he really feels like eating. Actually, he's nearing toward nausea, having to look at Khadija's lifeless desk. The remnants of her soul still litter it's surface, and his eyes uncontrollably take in the family photos and the slanting handwriting and the mousepad patterned like a Persian rug. A light jacket hangs on the back of the swivel chair. He wonders who's job it is to clear away personal affects. He prays to God it's not his.

On his way out of the noticeably muted Q-Branch, he runs into Julian Gibbins, and tries to curve his face into something other than utter despair when he tells him, "Congratulations. You've been promoted."

Julian nods, and might've tried to smile, but Q's already run off down the corridor. He slips into the men's restroom, slams the solid wood door, then sobs until it hurts to breathe. He can hardly remember the last time the tears fell this heavily but he can't muster up any shame for them. He puts his face in his hands and weeps like a boy.

At the end of it he takes a long time to collect himself, splashing cool water on his face and taking long, ragged breaths. A headache brews behind his eyes. He lets out a fluent string of swears, then pulls his glasses back on and steps back into the civilized world of English stoicism.

Outside, on the front steps, his gaze is caught by Moneypenny. She leans against a side railing, holding a cigarette between two fingers. Her nails are painted a sunset orange and her almond eyes are far away.

Q stops a few feet above her, and though he's sure she sees him she doesn't spare a look his way. "Eve," he calls, and her eyes dart up unreadably. "I didn't know you smoked."

She watches him trot toward her before she replies, "Everyone smokes when things don't go according to plan."

He considers her, notes how the cigarette somehow makes her look both infantile and ancient at the same time. He says, "I'm going to lunch," and it's mostly an invitation.

Moneypenny tilts her head slightly, and follows him down the steps. On the sidewalk, they talk little, but keep a companionable silence. Like everything else once inconsequential, Copenhagen has changed this, too. They sit down at an outdoor cafe, and it's only after they've ordered drinks that they begin to speak.

"They think they've found the leak," Moneypenny starts off, eyes locked on her menu. "The one that was passing information to the Marteles' network."

"The one that fucked the whole plan."

She nods grimly. "It's not anyone in Q-Branch."

"Who is it then?"

Her lips press together. "I can't say yet. It all makes sense but they can't take action yet until they have all the evidence settled."

"Are you just withholding information so I won't go on a murderous rampage to exact revenge?" he asks, only half joking.

She smiles knowingly. "You wouldn't do that."

"How do you know? I've been in the field now. I'm practically a double-O. Ruthless killer right here."

"How'd you like it, then? Getting out into the thick of it?"

"It was awful," he answers immediately, but then adds less fluidly, "But I see why they do it."

Moneypenny makes a sympathetic coo, like she's reading his mind. Because they both know that there's something impossibly intriguing about killing, about watching death, combined with and maybe even overshadowing the sickening guilt. For all he would deny it if asked, Q knows fully that he'll be replaying bits and pieces of that violent night for the rest of his life. And not just because of the monstrous grief and compunction that it haunts him with.

"The conscience is a strange thing," she says muses. "It allows a lot of things it probably shouldn't."

"We should never be allowed in the field," he murmurs with a bitter chuckle.

"Christ, by that logic no one should be in the field."

He gives her a sly smile as their food arrives. "Well, it is a brave new world."

Moneypenny just dismisses him with a shake of her head, and he can't help but agree with her. The relatively madness of the double-O section still rules from the shadows. Though the world may be brave, it is certainly not new.

m m m

Q lets himself in on silent feet, but his discretion is hardly necessary—Bond is thoroughly preoccupied, muscles and organs heaving to propel him above the pull-up bar. Q doubts that the double-O can hear anything beyond the blood in his ears and the creak of his healing bullet wound and the unstoppable force of time.

Q stops in the doorway of Training and watches.

Finally, Bond lets his fingers slither off the bar, and crumples into a position somewhere between squatting and sitting, eyes staring hard into the ground. Only when Bond's breathing has calmed does Q let himself be known, stepping forward with a ringing footstep and the gentle words, "Gets harder every time, I imagine."

Bond watches him draw closer before replying, barely audible, "I suppose at some point it won't be worth it."

Q wouldn't know how to respond to this, so he doesn't.

Instead, he takes the risk and bends his defective body down to Bond's level, so their eyes meet. Once again, blue to hazel and hazel to blue. Bond reaches out one audacious hand to trace a dark circle under Q's eye but Q swats him away at the last minute, eyes swerving to one of the closed circuit cameras that document all of MI6, even when only stubborn quartermasters and recovering double-O's are left in the building. Bond just snickers. "They already know, love."

"Well, yes, but don't perpetuate the rumor. That kiss in Q-Branch could have meant anything..."

Bond gives him an incredulous look, then smirks. "Regardless, I had my psych eval this morning. Dependency assessments, word associations, the usual rubbish—and the second thing they asked me was the first phrase that came to mind when hearing the letter 'Q.'"

Q is almost afraid to ask. "And what did you say?"

Bond relishes smugly in a dramatic pause, then deadpans. "'Mine.'"

"Oh my god," Q needs at his forehead, but can't keep the grin off his face. "You're going to get us both sacked."

"We could assassinate M and they still wouldn't sack us," Bond chuckles. "We're too useful for our own good."

They both snigger a bit about this, despite everything. Bond seems to have recovered somewhat, and is pulling himself to his feet and sticking the heart monitors back on. The regulation training uniform still shows that he's a fine specimen, Q thinks, even if a little worn.

Q stands also, the work already calling him back. Bond gives a little leap to reattach himself to the bar, but just hangs for a second, looking pensively at Q.

"What's your real name?" he rumbles, half-smiling inquisitively.

"As I understand it, it would be a huge breach of security to say that on camera, or in any room that hasn't been scanned thoroughly for listening devices," Q replies amusedly. "But I can assure you, it's completely ridiculous."

"Good ridiculous?"

"The best sort of ridiculous," Q answers over his shoulder.

He's almost made it to the door when he hears a grunt and quick, padding steps on the concrete floor. Then thick arms envelope him from behind, lips brushing his jaw. He leans into the embrace and is suddenly possessed by the terrifying, transient feeling of possibility. The volatile possibility that perhaps all beautiful things don't have to end in tragedy.


End file.
